Apress.Expert.Oracle.Database.Architecture.9i.and.10g.Programming.Techniques.and.Solutions.Sep.2005

CHAPTER 15 ■ DATA LOADING AND UNLOADING 657
To load fixed-width positional data, you will use the POSITION keyword in the control file,
for example:
LOAD DATA
INFILE *
INTO TABLE DEPT
REPLACE
( DEPTNO position(1:2),
DNAME position(3:16),
LOC position(17:29)
)
BEGINDATA
10Accounting Virginia,USA
This control file does not employ the FIELDS TERMINATED BY clause; rather, it uses POSITION
to tell SQLLDR where fields begin and end. Of interest with the POSITION clause is that we
could use overlapping positions, and go back and forth in the record. For example, if we were
to alter the DEPT table as follows:
ops$tkyte@ORA10G> alter table dept add entire_line varchar(29);
Table altered.
and then use the following control file:
LOAD DATA
INFILE *
INTO TABLE DEPT
REPLACE
( DEPTNO position(1:2),
DNAME position(3:16),
LOC position(17:29),
ENTIRE_LINE position(1:29)
)
BEGINDATA
10Accounting Virginia,USA
the field ENTIRE_LINE is defined as POSITION(1:29). It extracts its data from all 29 bytes of input
data, whereas the other fields are substrings of the input data. The outcome of the this control
file will be as follows:
ops$tkyte@ORA10G> select * from dept;
DEPTNO DNAME LOC ENTIRE_LINE
---------- -------------- ------------- -----------------------------
10 Accounting Virginia,USA 10Accounting Virginia,USA
When using POSITION, we can use relative or absolute offsets. In the preceding example,
we used absolute offsets. We specifically denoted where fields begin and where they end. We
could have written the preceding control file as follows: